When Haley Stempeck was born, her first stop after the hospital was Casale’s Halfway Club, a small but humming Italian American restaurant owned and operated by her grandmother on East 4th Street. “This was where you showed off your new baby,” she says. “‘Cause this is where the family was.”
Named for the traditional midpoint between Reno and Sparks, Nevada, Casale’s Halfway Club remains one of northern Nevada’s most treasured historic landmarks. It’s also a great place to unwind with pizza, pasta, and a carafe of wine. By all accounts, it may be the oldest operating restaurant in the state, passing through four generations and now run by Haley, who has grown up to understand the timeless combination of food, family, and familiarity.
The roots of the operation stretch back to John Casale, an Italian immigrant who worked the Tonopah mines before moving to the Reno-Sparks area to buy a business called the Coney Island Dairy and raise a family. He was connected through correspondence with Elvira Pazzagli, who traveled from Genoa in Italy to become his bride. The couple built a house just a few blocks away.
That home, which would become Casale’s Halfway Club, opened a small produce stand out front in 1937, serving food to motorists on the old Lincoln Highway (U.S. 40). The road was a paved, dusty conduit between the growing Reno and Sparks communities — and a relatively modest stretch on a transcontinental route connecting New York and San Francisco. From there, the business evolved into a small market and deli, serving meats from a counter that eventually became the bar with a scale still on display. Back then, the signature ravioli sold uncooked, an option that continues as tradition today and remains especially popular around the holidays…